Reading from an External Hard Drive

[MagitekAngel]

Hey guys, I know this is a pretty boneheaded question, but how can I read data from an external hard drive on my Xbox 360? I plugged the thing in, but my Xbox doesn't seem to recognize it. I'm not trying to save games on it or anything, I just want to stream movies off of it. Any suggestions?

[moycon]

Hey guys, I know this is a pretty boneheaded question, but how can I read data from an external hard drive on my Xbox 360? I plugged the thing in, but my Xbox doesn't seem to recognize it. I'm not trying to save games on it or anything, I just want to stream movies off of it. Any suggestions?

 

Only thing I've hooked up are Zunes and they work fine.

I looked online and supposedly you can plug in an external drive.

Here were the steps:

 

Step 1

 

Ensure you have an external hard drive with a USB 2.0 adapter. The type of drive is not important; it just needs the USB 2.0 to connect to the Xbox console.

 

Step 2

 

Install a program like Symantec Partition Magic, which allows you to format FAT32 file systems. You will have to purchase this program. You'll need it because most Windows systems won't format FAT32 above 32 gigabytes.

 

Step 3

 

Connect the external drive to your Windows PC. Windows XP or later should automatically install the USB adapter. Using Partition Magic, create a new FAT32 partition on the drive and format the volume.

 

Step 4

 

Attach the external drive to your Xbox 360 console with the USB connection. Anything loaded onto the hard drive after it's formatted for FAT32 can be read by going to the Media selection on your Xbox and selecting "Portable Device."

[Atariboy]

People have trouble with this all the time, sometimes the drive can't draw enough power from the USB port for it to work on the 360.

 

Does it have an external power supply you could use?

[MagitekAngel]

Yes, it uses its own power supply which I had plugged in.

I will try formatting the thing too.

The 360 will read flash drives from the same USB port, so this isn't life or death, but the problem will bother me until I resolve it.